The Big Deal - Operating Profitably Across Lifecycles
Every product company faces the dilemma of balancing growth and profitability, irrespective of where the company and its products are in their lifecycles. For small and mid-size companies the problem is especially acute given limited resources. However, larger companies are not immune either. The big challenge -
How to balance growth with the needs of overall Operations and Product profitability?
Sales & Marketing lead the field in executing on the growth path. But, who takes the lead with this Balancing Act? How to achieve this balance?
At Zyom, we have found that with the right leadership, Operations is in the best position to lead the balancing act, working in close concert with Sales. Why? Since Operations has to constantly balance supply with demand while keeping product and operating costs optimally low, and ensure profitability can be attained and sustained.
How can you achieve this?
All the Operations improvement initiatives to date - Constraint-based management/ Advanced Planning, Lean, Postponement, ABC, Sales & Ops Planning - contribute in a positive way to Lifecycle profitability. However, it's not enough.
Two elements are critical to achieve this -
- A. Demand Responsive Operations - Real-time collaboration across teams and partner organizations spanning the Value Network, to understand and capture demand signals, respond smartly and rapidly to demand, and to changes in demand and supply, in near real-time, all the while keeping a pulse on the key operating metrics.
- B. Profit Optimizing Decisions - Analytics-enabled decisions to manage and fulfill demand, and changes to demand and supply in a profitable manner (maximizing or optimizing profitability, minimizing or optimizing cost as needed).
It is paramount that key building blocks of these elements are built optimally & tied together with an overall process flow architecture, to realize this.
Zyom's system and services provide an unprecedented operating advantage in this area.
Equipped with these, cross-functional operating teams - Supply Chain, Sales, Product-Line Operations - and their ecosystem of partners, including Suppliers such as CMs/ODMs & Channel Partners such as Distributors, can make decisions and plans that are based on data across multiple dimensions, such as where the company's products are in their lifecycles, and execute fast on these plans with a new set of metrics, going through rapid re-planning cycles as needed.
Ample time is freed up for system-enabled, data-driven analysis and advanced analytics, which yield higher value, high quality decisions.
Utilizing this, customers have gained a unique advantage working with Zyom and our MozartCC System.
Check out practical ideas in this Blog and following resources based on customer experiences:
1) Zyom Blog: Operating Parts' Supply Chain in Uncertain times - Key Learnings
2) Zyom Blog: Lead time - A Time to Refocus
3) Summary of Zyom Industry Report:The Responsiveness Advantage
4) Full Report: The Responsiveness Advantage: Gain an Operating Advantage with this Elusive Capability-set; A ZYOM INDUSTRY REPORT (September, 2019)